


through the dust

by Nokomis



Series: when the dust settles [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 22:58:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dust came in huge clouds, like pictures Stiles once seen of desert towns disappearing into sandstorms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	through the dust

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing the 'when the dust settles' post-apocalyptic 'verse. You don't have to read the two previous works for this one to make sense. Originally posted on tumblr [here](http://nokomiss.tumblr.com/post/55756576479/through-the-dust)

The dust came in huge clouds, like pictures he'd once seen of desert towns disappearing into sandstorms.  His father had cut his eyes to the rearview mirror, slammed on the gas, and had swerved into the next pull off.  It was a lonely old gas station and restaurant rotting away on the side of a highway, clearly built before the interstate had rerouted traffic.  His father pushed him out of the car, frantically shepherded Stiles into a roadhouse.

 

There had been other people there, Stiles was almost sure of it, the faint memories of old men crowded around a card game and a bored waitress popping her gum, but when the cloud passed...

 

They were alone.

 

*

 

They kept driving, driving, driving afterwards.

 

Everything still worked: Gas pumps functional, freezers running, everything humming along like nothing had happened.  Only...

 

There were barely any people left.  A tenth, they figure, maybe fifteen percent of the previous population. There's no rhyme or reason to who survived, and who disappeared. Some people think they are the survivors, others think they were left behind in the Rapture.

 

HIs father is better at comforting people, at protecting people, than Stiles is.  It comes naturally to him; it's his job.  Stiles might be used to the supernatural disaster portion of events, but his dad...  He _leads_ people.

 

They keep trying to head back to Beacon Hills, but something stops them, every time.  The roads lead them different places, places Stiles can't find on maps. Places that should be a hundred miles north; or out on the coast.

 

He tries to map it out, but he ends up with overlapping lines and more confused than before.

 

His father's approach works better. He draws people in, builds a band of survivors around them, starts to function like a community. They set up in a motel, everyone getting their own space. 

 

It starts to look like a home, but Stiles knows that he has to find Scott. The pack. Allison.

 

He even misses Derek, sees him when he closes his eyes.

 

*

 

Two months in, and there's a restlessness in him. It's not the normal restlessness, the can't-stop-moving feeling that propels him from one moment to the next, but something deeper.  Something that sends him out onto the breezeway during the night, leaning against the cold metal railing and staring up at the moon cutting through the hazy darkness. 

 

Stars are rarely visible, now, but the moon...  She fights her way through the dust.

 

*

 

Stiles doesn't know when the darkness first started to creep in.

 

One day he opens up one of the empty rooms to air out before his dad returns with new refugees, and...

 

There's something there.

 

He can't look directly at it. Maybe he can't even _see_ it.  But it's there, he knows it, dark and gaping and terrible.

 

He shuts the door hastily, turns the lock.  Backs up until the railing bites into his back.

 

He goes into the room next door. Finds the Do Not Disturb sign.  Carefully hangs it on the dark, terrible room.

 

No one asks why.

 

*

 

When Stiles drops groceries off at a room, as though it's routine, but when the door swings open, the room is undisturbed and dusty, like it's been empty for years...

 

He wonders who is gone now. He must have known the person, maybe more than one. Maybe it was a whole family.

 

But he can't bring to mind any faces, any details, not even a shadow of a memory.

 

When he slowly enters the room, pushes open the bathroom door, there's something there.  It's the dark terrible thing, only it's solidified into a nightmare, and he has to...

 

He backs up, thoughts jumbled. There has to be something he can do. Some way to defeat it.

 

He thinks, absurdly, of a television show he'd watched, before the world fell to pieces, where a boy had defeated an impossible thing with flame and fearlessness.

 

He sets the room ablaze before rational thought can kick in

 

*

 

They have to relocate.

 

His father doesn't yell, doesn't even look disappointed in him. Just sighs and runs his hands through his buzzed-short hair as he watches their home burn.

 

"It seemed... It was the only thing to do, at the time," Stiles explains again, voice cracked and raw from the smoke. He'd stayed, to make sure the nightmare couldn't escape. It hadn't, he was sure of it.

 

"It wasn't safe anymore, anyhow," his dad sighs."Easier this way, to get them to move. The illusion of safety's a hard thing to abandon."

 

*

 

The group slowly splinters off, as they caravan down the highway.

 

It's a relief, really, as they whittle down to a core group. Fewer people to forget.  Fewer people to not-miss when they disappear.

 

Stiles stays awake nights, and slowly it dawns on him that he misses Scott. Misses Derek. Misses Allison and even Isaac and Peter. He misses Beacon Hills.

 

It can't be gone, if he misses it. They're _still alive_.

 

*

 

They find a house, one with enough big windows and open ceilings that they feel comfortable staying in it for longer than a night. 

 

His dad discovers the way that stainless steel slices through the darkness by accident;  he was clearing the creeping brush away from one of the paths when it stuck fast into the darkness.  Panic set in, and Stiles froze, certain that he was going to forget the most important person in his life.

 

Then his dad shoves his weight behind the blade, shoves it in deeper, deeper, until the resistance seems to just... dissipate.

 

The machete falls to the ground with a dull _clunk_. There is black dust settling onto the ground, but the darkness...

 

The darkness is gone.

 

*

 

It's safer to avoid the shadows, even armed.

 

One slip and you disappear. No body, no memory left behind.

 

Stiles practices and practices, and sometimes his father watches him with sad eyes.

  
They both know where he's going.

 

*

 

Five months after his yearly roadtrip with his father left them alone in a dying world, Stiles starts to pack up a car. It's not a Jeep, just something they found on the road with keys in it, but he doesn't think that he's going to be in it long.

 

He thinks maybe he'll do better on foot. That he might be able to push through the discordant new arrangement of things if he's got his feet on the earth.

 

His father meets him at the door, before he takes out the duffel with extra clothes and extra machetes.  He holds out his service pistol, leaning heavily against his crutch as he does so.

 

Stiles can't look him in the eye for a moment. He knows that if he leaves, he might not be able to find his way back.  "You should come, too."

 

The Sheriff looks ruefully at his foot, at the heavy bandages covering his ankle. The fall had been a nasty one, but one of the new guys was a nurse before and thought the bone might knit together neat enough that he'd walk normally.

 

Stiles couldn't wait that long.  He had a feeling, something dark and deadly within him, and he has to go. Has to help Scott, has to help Derek. 

 

"Take it," his dad says. Stiles does, and the weight of the gun is almost too much as he checks the safety -- his dad makes an approving sound -- and shoves it in his duffel.

 

"I'll be back--" his voice cracks painfully "--as soon as I can."

 

"I know," his dad says softly. They both know this world is too cruel for it to be true.

 

"I love you," Stiles says, flinging his arms around his father. He never wants to let go, wants to stay here forever.  The feeling could go away, it could...

 

Only if he forgets them.

 

"I love you, son," his dad says, voice raw.  "If I get better... before... I'll come."

 

"I left maps," Stiles says. He blinks rapidly. "I don't have to--"

 

"You wouldn't be the son I love if you didn't," his dad interrupts. "Go. Find them."

 

Each step was leaden, and he watched his father in the rearview mirror until all he could see was dust in his wake.

 

*

 

It works.

 

His plan works.

 

Once he got somewhere he thought might be near Beacon Hills -- similar climate, roughly close to where it used to be -- he parked the car on the side of the road, takes only the essentials, and sets off.

 

He heads west.  The map says Beacon Hills should be east, but Stiles knows the rules of this world are arbitrary enough that the old elementary school Opposite Day plan might actually be a valid form of attack.

 

He walks, and camps in a clearing as far from the trees as possible, waking to check for darkness every few hours. The shadows here are less vivid, still dusty enough that Stiles thinks maybe whatever weirdness has always cloaked the town might have protected it, some. 

 

He destroys what coalesced nightmares he finds.

 

 He walks and walks, forests rising around him, and suddenly...

 

The Hale house is there, rising from the forest like a beacon.

 

He sinks on a fallen tree, exhausted and elated and missing his father more fiercely than he thought possible, and just stares at the old familiar ruins.

 

He's almost home. He's nearly _made_ it. He should lope through the woods, should race to the town, should find everyone, but something stops him.  He needs to gather his thoughts.

 

He takes a deep breath, and...

 

Someone's there.  Rustling in the forest, and when Derek Hale steps into the clearing, Stiles' breath catches in his throat.  He's real, he _exists_ , and Stiles...

 

Stiles wasn't wrong. He remembers him and he's here, standing in front of him, staring at him like he doesn't recognize Stiles, like _Stiles_ is the forgotten one. For a long terrible moment Stiles wonders if maybe on that last fight his arm slipped, if he's wandering the world alone, forgotten, if he's gone like everyone else, just out of reach...

 

And then recognition dawns on Derek's face.  “Stiles,” he says shakily, and it takes everything in Stiles to stay still.  To not fling himself at him.

 

To not confirm he’s real. 

 

(When Derek’s forehead touches his, when their heads are bowed together and he can feel Derek’s breath mingling with his, feels how real and warm and alive and _present_ Derek is…

 

He’s come home.)

 

Eventually, they pull apart.  Stiles doesn’t want to, wants to stay pressed together, but they have to…

 

They have to go see Scott.  Scott and Allison and Isaac, Derek says, in a single breath that shows they’ve grown to fill each other’s jagged edges.  There’s a lonely rawness to Derek, now, and Stiles…

 

Stiles feels the restlessness within him, the strange one that lead him to watch the dusky moon and pushed him into the darkness to find them, start to abate.

 

“You remembered me,” he says, picking up his machete and leading Derek to where he dropped his duffel when he realized he was staring at a familiar ruin. 

 

“How could I forget?” Derek says, and it’s so right. It’s perfect, and Stiles knows he doesn’t even _know…_

“You won’t,” he says, anger rising. At what the world has become, that nightmares are made manifest. “I promise, you won’t have to.”

 

Derek’s brow furrows, he starts to ask, but Stiles walks steadily towards town.  He’s going to tell them all at once.

 

Halfway there, he catches the back of Derek’s hand with his own. The brief contact grounds him, and he feels his anger edging away.

 

He made it.

 

*

 

(“You made it, you made it,” Scott babbles into his neck, squeezing him tight enough to hurt, and Allison ruffles his hair. Isaac hangs back until Scott pulls him in, and Stiles is surrounded, surrounded, surrounded.)

 

*

 

Peter watches him like prey, now. It should make him uneasy, but he’s seen worse.  Peter’s eyes are shadowed, but they’re no match for the darkness that Stiles knows is creeping ever closer.

 

He wakes every few hours, still. Stares deep into the shadows of his room, expecting to feel a gaping darkness in them. 

 

He gets up, moving as quietly as he can through the loft, knowing that the werewolves will hear him anyway. If they’re awake; it’s nearly dawn, the quietest hour of the night.

 

He slips onto the balcony, leaning his arms against the ledge as he stares up at the relentless black sky. No moon tonight.

 

“I can turn on the light, if you want.”  Derek is sitting silently to his left, head leaning against the plain cement wall.  Stiles can only make out his profile, severe and beautiful.

 

“No,” Stiles says. “I’m not afraid of the dark.” It’s not really a lie. He fears what’s _in_ the dark, not the absence of light.

 

“What’s it like, out there?”  Derek turns, and Stiles sees the faintest flash of blue.

 

“Quiet.”  It’s the only word that comes to mind, to describe all he saw.  “Very quiet.”

 

“With you there, I doubt it,” Derek says.  Stiles hesitates, a stuttering movement Derek has to see, and then he steels himself and sits next to Derek. Their knees bump together, and Stiles exhales loudly. “I tried, but to no avail.”

 

“The Sheriff—“ Derek’s voice trails off. 

 

“I remember him,” Stiles says.

 

“I can go get him,” Derek offers. It’s not an idle offer, Stiles can tell from the deliberateness of his voice. Derek has thought this through.

 

It might work, is the hardest part. Derek is a werewolf, could probably find his way there and back.

 

“I can’t let you risk…” Stiles is the one who trails off, this time.

 

“Scott’s been in charge here for a long time,” Derek says. “Your maps are good. I can do this.”

 

_Let me do this_ , his tone says.  Stiles sucks in a breath. He hasn’t let himself…

 

He hasn’t let himself hope. That his dad might make it here, not since the fall.  He watches the sky, wonders what his dad is doing.  Wonders if he’s safe.

 

“I won’t stop you,” Stiles says finally.

 

“As long as you stay here,” Derek replies. He’s definitely planned this already, Stiles realizes.  Has probably been thinking it through since he told them about leaving his dad behind.

 

Stiles wants to argue, but he knows he can’t. Knows that Scott’s burgeoning plan is going to need his expertise.

 

Knows that he can’t let anyone here disappear, any more than he can let his dad stay alone out there when Derek is offering…

 

Is offering him everything.

 

“You have to come back,” he says, voice shaking. “Both of you, when you find him. You can’t leave me alone.”

 

Derek nods, and reaches out. Takes Stiles’s hand, and presses a kiss on the back of his thumb. “On my honor.”

 

When Stiles wakes up the next morning, staring up at an overcast sky, Derek is already gone.

 


End file.
